manufacturer OEM restore disks

[neverender]

hi all, I own a laptop with a cracked LCD screen that will cost me (according to the manufacturer) ~80% of what I paid for the laptop. the manufacturer refused my request for the original MCE 2005 installation disks, and although I would gladly buy a normal installation disk from microsoft, I feel as if I already have. apparently, I cannot use the restore DVD on any other machine except this laptop (or probably more accurate, other laptops from the same company.) I've considered converting this laptop into a full fledged HTPC, but doing so would require me to replace hardware, which in turn would invalidate the DVD (at least I think it would...) so on that note, is there anything I can do to both make good use of what I have left of the laptop, or is there a way I could get around this problem. I've read a fairly decent amount of posts regarding slipstreaming sp2, or whatnot (mostly regarding nLite), but I haven't found anything of notable use. the restore CD seems to be of the drive image variety, and not an OEM installation. It does not boot as a typical MS installation CD would, by this I mean the blue screen pre-installion loading. I don't know how to go about extracting this data from the DVD, nor do I know if it is even a possibility. Can anyone help me out please?

[Noise]

Well you can always use your laptop with an external monitor. You will have to configure power management so XP won't goto sleep with the laptop lid closed. But it can make a good system with an external keyboard mouse and monitor.

You're system came with a "Restore CDROM" instead of real Windows installation disks. I hate it when they do that. However, many time you can create a Windows XP installation CDROM from the files inside the Restore CDROM.

Use the Restore CDROM to reinstall your laptop OS. Somewhere inside the files on your C: drive should be the entire Windows XP Installation CDROM copied into a directory. Usually these installation files are located in C:\I386 but sometime they are hidden elsewhere. The file in C:\I386 are a direct copy from the original Windows XP installation CDROM. You can use these file with programs like nLite or HFSLIP to create a new installation CDROM.

Good Luck.

[Bezalel]

Take a look at ScreenTek. They deal exclusively in replacement screens and are much cheaper than the laptop manufacurers.

[prx984]

you could take the monitor right off the computer, then just hook a monitor up to it, then you dont need another mouse or keyboard. or look on ebay perhaps for a dead laptop like yours with a good display, then just change em around. just a coupla ideas